Copper broadband subscriber numbers drop further in Q1

About 415k copper broadband consumers lost during the fourth quarter of 2012.

The number of lost copper broadband subscribers has reached to 2.77 million during the first quarter of 2013, compared to 415k consumers lost during the fourth quarter of 2012, according to a new report from Point Topic.

Services offered by the copper broadband include all DSL, ADSL and ADSL2+ subscribers reported by operators globally.

Point Topic operations director Laura Kell said that, of course, copper remains the dominant service for most users across the world.

"But we believe that we are starting to see a shift in technology, particularly to fibre and hybrid fibre, as consumers require and will pay for higher speeds from their broadband connections," Kell said.

According to the report, FTTx services have reported rapid rise during the previous two years, and by late Match 2013, subscriber numbers had surpassed cable for the first time.

Despite the fact of growing popularity of FTTH services, it has been at a much lower rate, with their overall market share being much lower.

Cable serves about 50% of the fixed broadband market in the Americas, which is also the chief market for FTTH technology.

According to Point Topic, Asia has the largest market for FTTx technologies, with maximum population access in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan.

Majority of drop in copper subscribers were reported in Asia, with Africa being the only region reporting growth for copper subscriber numbers.

"Fixed broadband will continue to struggle in Africa as there is little or no legacy infrastructure and the superfast bandwidths will not be common for some time," Kell said.

"Meanwhile in Asia and Europe where hybrid fibre is the technology of choice at the moment we see increasing overall bandwidths but perhaps at the cost of the ‘future proofing’ that end to end fibre provides."